[The Omniverse - The Apex Exchange Core]
The Apex Exchange was the beating heart of the Higher Dimensional Corporate Sector. It was a colossal, floating sphere of condensed starlight where trillions of Omni-Credits changed hands every millisecond.
Deep within the subterranean maintenance levels of the Exchange, Victor Thorne stood in his immaculate midnight-blue suit. Beside him, Valerius, the celestial CEO of Abyssal Hardware, was using his four arms to frantically splice a glowing fiber-optic ley-line into the Exchange's main data conduit.
"Principal Thorne," Valerius whispered, sweat beading on his forehead. "If the Omniversal Trade Commission catches us tapping directly into the primary trade server, they will liquidate us."
"We aren't hacking the server, Valerius," Victor said smoothly, pulling his gold pocket watch from his vest. "We are simply renting closet space. Is the new Abyssal Data routing node installed?"
"Yes, Sir. The node is exactly ten feet away from the Apex Exchange's core matching engine," Valerius confirmed, sealing the server rack.
Victor tapped his gold-nibbed pen against the Tycoon's Ledger.
"In the financial sector, information travels at the speed of light," Victor explained, his Tycoon's Aura humming with predatory calculation. "The Central Omniversal Bank is located across the megacity. It takes their trade orders exactly twelve milliseconds to reach this core."
Victor slashed his pen across the Ledger, activating the new routing node.
"Because our server is physically ten feet away, our trade orders reach the core in zero-point-one milliseconds," Victor smiled a cold, ruthless smile. "We have a latency advantage. We can see the Bank's massive buy orders before they are actually processed."
Up on the trading floor, a massive consortium of Wealth Gods decided to buy ten billion shares of celestial mythril. They submitted their order.
Down in the closet, Victor's algorithm saw the incoming order. In the span of a single microsecond, the Tycoon's Ledger automatically bought all the available mythril on the market at the current price. A fraction of a millisecond later, the Wealth Gods' order arrived. Because Victor now owned all the mythril, the algorithm instantly sold it to them at a one-percent markup.
"We just bought their asset and sold it back to them before they even blinked," Valerius gasped, watching the Omni-Credits flood into their offshore accounts.
"It is called Latency Arbitrage. High-Frequency Trading," Victor checked his Rolex. "We don't need to predict the market. We just need to be a millisecond faster than it. Turn the algorithm to maximum capacity. Let's front-run the Gods."